Thursday, April 28, 2011

Ashley had the genius idea of making multiples of himself and placing them sporadically around the apartment to surprise me (or just freak me out). I thought I was going crazy when I awoke to go to the bathroom and was greeted by Ashley outside my bedroom door...wait, wasn't he still in bed?!?! Paper life size Ashley was standing in the hallway. It frightened me so much that I made him tell me if there were more in the apartment before I left the room. "Flat" Ashley was also jumping in the living room and sitting on the couch—too bad he wasn't preparing me brunch too...oh wait, I have the real Ashley to do that!

After a little Birthday party, my pal Jordan wound up taking a "flat" Ashley home. He was very pleased to have a friend to go to the park with the following day.

Ashley is out of town this week and I am solo with Pico. I am thinking I will sleep next to "flat" Ashley tonight because I miss him so much.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Yesterday a special delivery came for me. I had completely forgotten that I scored an amazing piece of art on ebay last week and was giddy when a large box arrived at my desk.

The piece is a framed pair of children in a sort of oversized paper doll style. Each child is dressed adorably, but the best part of the whole piece is that the dolls have real human hair. I love that someone created this so many years ago and took such care in making these dolls come to life.

The back of the frame revealed some information about the artist, which makes the piece even more special. The frame was old and dirty and the paper backing peeling and flaking away. It needed a bit of restoring, so I did some cleaning and replaced the frame backing with an archival mat. I also tidied up the hair because it too had flaked off underneath the glass.

I thought is was neat how the artist had decided to mount the dolls. A stretched piece of silk over a recycled piece of cardboard with old graphics. The silk was not glued or taped to the board, but was zigzag stitched from side to side and top to bottom. It made me smile at the artist's cleverness.

Of course I saved the only reference of the artist in its original form and re-adhered it to the back.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

I just finished watching Waste Land, a documentary about artist Vik Muniz and his undertaking with the garbage pickers who mine treasure from the trash heaps of Rio de Janeiro's Jardim Gramacho landfill.

Quite an interesting film.

Portraits are composed completely of rubbish.

He obviously likes to explore a variety of different mediums and material.

Monday, April 11, 2011

I can't even fathom how on earth he created these masterpieces with such crisp lines and photographic realism. This takes bottled sand art to an entirely different level. You have to be a very special individual to be able to collect sand samples, carefully sort every little grain by both color and size and meticulously place each sand speck in the perfect position within a glass bottle. Wow—I'm utterly impressed.